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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25922881">A Sacred Note</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/CloudDreamer/pseuds/CloudDreamer'>CloudDreamer</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Prince With A Thousand Enemies [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dr. Carmilla (Musician), The Mechanisms (Band)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Branding, Bugs &amp; Insects, Clone Rights Now, Clones, Dr Carmilla's A+ Parenting, Dubiously Ethical Science (Implied/Referenced), Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Laboratories, Nausea, Not RPF, Pinned Butterfly, Silvana Laboratories</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 04:01:42</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,148</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25922881</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/CloudDreamer/pseuds/CloudDreamer</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Maki Yamazaki 002091 is (not) afraid of Doctor Carmilla.</p><p>Title from "creature" by half•alive.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dr Carmilla &amp; Clone Maki Yamazaki</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Prince With A Thousand Enemies [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1881310</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Stowaways' Shenanigans</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>A Sacred Note</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Maki examines the tiny insect trapped beneath the thin pane of glass. </p><p>Memories that aren’t theirs, just distant enough not to overwhelm them ever time they reach for them but far from easy to understand, impossible to integrate, fill in the gaps. Papilo Zelicaon. Swallowtail butterfly. Ageha. </p><p>She is stiff, and Maki knows this one is a she from a thousand tiny details, and dead. She could fly once upon a time, and they remember watching her. Wings alight, fluttering from place to place with a freedom they know they’ll never have. She burned bright and quick, life snuffed out only days after she burst free from her cocoon. </p><p>And the Doctor was there, watching all the while. This couldn’t have been any more than a year ago, Maki’s certain, though what a year means across space and time, they’re less sure. The Doctor didn’t save her. What would be the point, when she could be used like this? Her wings are spread outwards, an unnatural angle, and one remaining pin pierces her thorax. Tiny. It shouldn’t be enough to keep her in place. </p><p>They can feel their own fingers pinching up pieces, wrapping wax paper around her, aiming dozens of lesser pins through the veins at the edges, and feel the sharp point sliding straight into her. There was a delicacy to the work, a deep curiosity. Maki smiles, lightly, at the memory. The white foam she’s pinned to is marked in the bottom right corner, words they can’t quite make out, until the lighting in the lab shifts. They squint, adjusting their vision— they’re not quite used to having two eyes— and they make out that species name, followed by a number. And, property of Silvana Laboratories. </p><p>And suddenly they’re not smiling anymore. </p><p>Suddenly, they feel sick, the same sickness that’s been inside them since before they were born, but something new too. They swallow down acid and can’t help but turn to where they know a camera is watching them. Where the ship is watching them. Where the Doctor is watching them. </p><p>They step away from the shadow box, eyes falling hopelessly on a smattering of tools against a work bench. Scalpels Maki is supposed to clean and put away, that it’s their job to put away and won’t she be so disappointed to come back and they’re not away, and they can’t do that right now. They tear their gaze away, but it’s caught by the drain in the white floor, and the acrid scent of blood is sharp in their memory, so intense that they’re certain it’s real. </p><p>There’s a burning just bellow their collar bone, burning like letters and numbers. Their name— Maki Yamazaki— followed by letters and numbers. Property of Silvana Laboratories. Just like her. They look back at the butterfly, the pins right through its vitals. It’s the first time they’ve seen those words anywhere outside of the mirror, when they pull the dress shirt the Doctor told them to put on— she’d asked them if they needed help with the buttons, so kind, so curious, so cold— down.</p><p>It’s not that they didn’t know what those words meant, that they didn’t remember the other Makis before her. But some part of them couldn’t believe it, couldn’t believe what everything logical screamed to them, when they’d held the Doctor’s hand. Even if her skin was cold, she’d tried. She’d comforted them, said they were going to help her with her research. Said that they were going to be so useful, so valuable, and that was love, wasn’t it?</p><p>And that couldn’t fit with everything else. She couldn’t be good and cold, and she was good, no matter how much she doubted that. Maki was safe from the world, as long as the Doctor was there to protect them. And if it comes down to Maki or the world, she’ll pick the world,  because she is a hero. </p><p>And to be a hero, she has to know more. She has to know everything.</p><p>They cough as they stagger backwards, not sure where their feet are falling, and it feels like the end of the world. It feels like the end of their world, that everything soft so far has been a lie. Or a game, or a trick, that this was the Doctor’s plan, to pull the rug out from under them, to see how they react to this sight. And that feeling might be right. Their memories from her are scattered, unintentionally, they know, but the absence of the last few months— as close to months as exists on a starship— is suddenly conspicuous. They don’t understand the parameters of their own existence anymore, if they ever did.</p><p>They crouch, leaning their head against the edge of the workbench, and their hair falls messily across their face. They don’t have the energy to brush it away, even as they feel like they might throw up. They won’t, but they might. There’s never any guarantee. They are sick. Breakable. No, worse, they’re already broken. They were made this way. </p><p>They can’t help but think of that pinned butterfly, it’s number only a couple of digits in the wrong place away from being theirs. Different start, different conditions, different letters but— they’re all part of this place. She came from the gardens, they came from here. Just here. A labyrinthine mess of a lab, but home, the only home they’ve ever known. The only home they’ll ever know, if they want to be useful. If they want to help. </p><p>And Maki does want to help. They want to be useful. They want to fulfill the only purpose they’ve ever had, and they wonder if she felt that way too. <i>It’s just a butterfly,</i> they think to themself. <i>It doesn’t mean anything.</i>And it doesn’t, but it does too. Because they can’t help but wonder what will happen when the Doctor turns that curious gaze on them again. Her hands that are so cold and so strong, powerful enough to reassure them, will push them against their own foam board, needles through their shoulders as they hang down at an awkward angle. </p><p>And they won’t scream either, because this is what Maki is made for. They are made to take the pain. There’s stories about vampires. Stakes through hearts. And they’re true, but not true at the same time. It’ll take more than wood to end the Doctor, but Maki’ll stop with that wood in them. Splinters in their chest. </p><p>They won’t complain. They bite at their lips, making marks that won’t fade away, again and again, and then they’re picking at their skin beneath their collarbone again, trying to make those words go away. But those words are a brand. They can’t seem to breathe right. </p><p>There are tears behind their eyes that they can’t seem to push away or let flow.</p>
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